


Snarl

by shiftylinguini



Series: Bound [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Character, Bisexual Nymphadora Tonks, Bisexual Remus Lupin, Diverges From Canon Somewhat after that, Drinking, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Infidelity, Mates, Nymphadora Tonks Lives, Nymphadora Tonks POV, OOTP Compliant, Part 3 of Wolfstar Lives AU, Past Hogwarts-era Sirius/Remus, Reference to the Veil, Remus Lupin Lives, Sirius Black Lives, Smoking, Swearing, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 15:39:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11316447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiftylinguini/pseuds/shiftylinguini
Summary: “Listen, Dora ―”“It’s Tonks,” she snaps and she hates the tone of her own voice. She’s furious at Sirius all of a sudden, furious at Remus too, the emotion surging up inside her. She doesn't want to be called that anymore.





	Snarl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RuinsPlume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RuinsPlume/gifts).



> Set a few weeks after Whimper, and won’t make sense without having read [Howl](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9809804), and [Whimper](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10633194), in that order. Post-war, but there’s a fair bit of canon divergence from OOTP onwards (especially regarding when Teddy was born).
> 
> Special thanks to Ruinsplume, who was marvellously encouraging, and to everyone who has been reading along. I hope you like meeting Tonks, RP! <3

***

“This is unexpected.”

“Is it?”

On the other side of the table, Sirius shifts slightly in his seat, looking away and then back again. He smiles slightly, wryly before he laughs once, a soft bark of a sound. 

“Alright. Perhaps not entirely unexpected,” he says, and there’s something light in his voice, something warm. It matches the emotion in the docile, unusual grey of his eyes, the comforting set of his jaw, and the light layering of coarse stubble she can see over it. 

Tonks wants to throw her tea in his face. It’s hot. Perhaps it will scald. 

Instead, she tightens her hands in her lap, counts backwards from ten, then exhales. She looks down at her tea cup, and for a split-second she wants to laugh at the sight of it ― why the fuck does Sirius Black have delicate periwinkle blue china, of all bloody things? ― but she swallows that down too. She hasn’t laughed in weeks, not really; she’s worried she’ll choke on the sound, and then where would she be? Dead, in the kitchen of her husband’s lover. Her husband’s technically deceased lover. 

_Jesus Christ_. 

“Do you have anything stronger?” Tonks manages. Her voice sounds hoarse and alien to her own ears. 

Sirius rubs his hand over his jaw, then nods, pushing his tea cup away. His chair scrapes against the floor as he stands, moving towards his sparsely filled liquor cabinet. He pulls out an aged bottle of what is probably whisky, the label having frayed and peeled away long ago. Tonks thinks she can make out an R, an O, underneath the long curl of Sirius’s fingers as he holds the bottle, pours out two tumblers of the honey coloured spirit. He stops for a moment, thinking, then adds a little more to each glass. _Good man_ , Tonks thinks. _Keep the liquor flowing and maybe we’ll both make it out of here alive_. 

“Aren’t you breastfeeding?” he says as he sets the thick, carved glass tumbler in front of her, and Tonks thinks maybe they won’t survive this after all. 

“I beg your fucking pardon?” she asks, her voice low and anger making her cheeks hot. 

Sirius swallows, immediately picking up on the reception of what he’s just said. He looks deeply uncomfortable. _Good_. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, expression tight as he sits back down again, his body angled slightly away from her. “When Lily was ― I just remember she wasn’t drinking, after she had. After Harry was born.” 

Sirius takes a large swig of his own drink, the whiskey sloshing against the sides and slowly running down the geometric shapes on the carefully carved glass as he sets it down against the wood of the table. There’s something in his expression now which wasn’t there before, something in his stable and calm facade slipping off, and Tonks feels her anger simmering down. She can see that for all he’s trying to be nice, to keep the tone light, that he’s feeling off balance, confronted by her presence. It’s oddly comforting, knowing that she’s not the only one who’s trying to make sense of what is going on here. 

“Teddy’s with his nan,” she says. It’s not exactly gentle, but it’s not as harsh as before. Tonks can feel the embarrassment prickling at the back of her neck; she doesn’t like the way she reacts to things lately, the volatile flash of her emotions. She knows it’s part of the paradox of being a woman; don't show enough emotion, and you’re cold, unfeeling, but show too much and you’re crazy, a histrionic harpy. She doesn't want to give anyone the satisfaction of fitting either description, but at the same time she doesn’t want to give credence to the idea that there’s something wrong with them. It’s a lose-lose situation, really, something she realised years ago. She just has to ride how she's feeling out, especially considering the other option is to repress it. She knows what happens when you try to do that; she’s been doing it since Sirius came back. At least she’s not doing it now. 

“If you tell me I look great for having just had a kid, I swear I will hex you,” she adds, trying to lighten the tense atmosphere. She doesn't know why she feels she should do that, why she feels she should try and smooth over the cracks in their interaction. She can’t tell if it works or not; Sirius’s face is unreadable. 

“Shall we get this over with, then?” he asks, and his voice is more resigned than angry. Tonks knows what he’s referring to. 

“You've been fucking him,” she responds plainly. Sirius doesn’t even blink. 

“Yes.” 

“How long?” 

“Since I was fifteen.” 

“Jesus.” She runs her hands over her face, composure cracking. She knew it’d been a long time, since well before she came on the scene, but she somehow hadn’t expected it went back that far. Remus never told her it went back _that_ far. “Well.” She clears her throat, shock making her voice wobble. “You’ve got quite the head start on me, then, don’t you?” 

Sirius has the decency to look uncomfortable. 

“Listen, Dora ―”

“It’s Tonks,” she snaps and she hates the tone of her own voice. She’s furious at Sirius all of a sudden, furious at Remus too, the emotion surging up inside her. She doesn't want to be called that anymore. 

Dora was something Remus called her once, and it stuck. She liked it, more than she had ever thought she would, the same kind of intense affection and attraction she felt for him as well. She remembers thinking that she would like to be a Dora, instead of this rough and tumble tomboy, this woman-child that never seemed to like boys much, that could never commit to the girls she dated. She could be a Dora for this man, and have a life with him, a baby and security and comfort. She could leave behind the chaotic hair, the morphing party tricks. She could do what everyone had been telling her to do and finally _grow up_. She’d do that, with this man by her side, and then she’d grow old with him too, do all the things she’d been told good girls did and which, deep down, she’d never really wanted. She’d been ready to do it with him, though. 

_And look how well that fucking worked out_ , she bitterly castigates herself. 

If there’s a lesson there, then she’s learned it. 

“Okay,” Sirius says slowly, confusion and irritation on his face at being corrected, at the sudden change in her demeanour once again. “But, you know. As they say, ‘ _what’s in a name_ ’ and all that, right?” he tries to joke. 

“Oh, is that so, _Padfoot_?” she grinds out, and delights at seeing him flinch slightly, then pause. He smiles wryly. 

“Yeah, okay. Point made. I won’t call you that,” he says, and he sounds more tired than anything else. He’s not old, Tonks reminds herself, and he doesn’t look it, not really. But there’s something about him which seems older than his years. The years in prison weren’t kind, and while he’s definitely healthier now, infinitely so, there’s still heavy shadows under his eyes, a thinness he can’t seem to shake. Strangely enough, he actually looked better when he’d first returned from the Veil, his handsome face an impossible sight at an impossible hour as he knocked at Remus’s door and met his lover’s wife instead. She’s not sure she wants to know why Sirius looks tireder now, more haggard, than he did after returning from the metaphorical grave. 

_Oh, fuck it all_ , Tonks thinks, as she feels sympathy for this man, for the cards he’s been dealt and the way the majority of them have blown up in his face, claw it’s way up inside her. She sighs internally, done with the rollercoaster of her own swinging emotions. She suddenly doesn’t want to be here anymore. 

“I’ve left him,” she says matter of factly. 

She doesn't add ‘ _two days after Teddy was born_.’ She doesn't want to remember how difficult packing was while Remus was out and her body felt like it had been hit by a train. There was something about the sight of that baby, after months of waiting to meet him, that told her it was time to cut the bullshit, even if she couldn't do it for herself. What was the old saying? Better to come from a broken home than to grow up in one. 

So, she left. 

Sirius’s head shoots up as he looks up at her. He blinks once, and then again, as his brows knit in confusion. 

“What ―” he starts, but she cuts him off. She assumes Sirius must know that she’s left, even though his confusion momentarily distracts her, but she pushes that aside. She wants to steer this conversation, even if she can’t control anything else that’s happening here. 

“You know, I knew he was in love with you when I met him,” she says, her voice as even as she can make it. “It was as plain as day, really. You could see it from bloody space, I expect,” she tries to joke. She sniffs, taking a small sip of her whisky then sighs as she sets it down again. Across, from her, Sirius says nothing. 

“And I knew it when we got together, too,” she continues. “He put up such a fight about that, you know. Well, of course you know about that,” she mutters, her stomach flipping nauseously. “And then you were gone, and that fight went out of him, too. That’s a fact,” she says, even though remembering it ― and her own determination to ignore that very fact ― makes her feel sick. “There was this… _huge_ hole in his life where you’d been. He never talked about you, not really. He’d say things, superficial things, but there was always so much underneath it that he could never say, couldn't even go near. I knew he was still in love with you.” 

She stares at her hands, at her small fingers with their bitten nails as she feels the traitorous tears welling in the corners of her eyes. She looks up at the ceiling, blinks rapidly as she wills the fuckers away. She’s not here to cry in front of Sirius. She’s not entirely sure why she is here, what she wants out of this ― whether it’s a fight, some resolution, or if this is just another form of torturing herself. Regardless, she doesn’t want to blub in front of him. She doesn't think her pride could stand it.

“I knew he loved me, too,” she continues, avoiding looking at Sirius and forcing a strength into her voice which she doesn’t feel. “He loved me,” she says again, and she knows it’s true. “But there was always you there. Even when you were fucking dead,” she says, feeling the anger roll inside her, a bitter taste in her mouth, “you were still bloody there, weren’t you?” She sighs, her face twisted in an unpleasant grimace. She takes another acrid swig of whisky, sets it down heavily. She doesn't even like whisky. “And then you came back, and I stupidly listened to him lie to me, to himself, about what this was. You came back, and he said it was….” she doesn't finish. Just physical, Dora, it’s just the wolf ― she hadn’t believed him for a second, wonders if he ever believed it himself. She doubts he could be that deluded. 

She wonders what he told Sirius. The pang of empathy feels sour inside her. 

Across, from her, Sirius remains silent. 

“Why did you come back?” she blurts after a moment, then immediately regrets it when she sees Sirius’s expression. As always, it’s not what she expects. He looks wounded, angry, as he glances away chewing on the inside of his cheek and on whatever he wants to say to her. She inhales deeply, trying to rein herself in. Being angry at the man for sleeping with her husband is one thing, but snapping at him for surviving? She shakes her head at herself. She might as well throw bricks in the ocean in an attempt to build a wall for all the good that resenting Sirius for living will do her. 

They sit in silence, each nursing their own grievance, for a long, tense moment. Tonks rests her elbows on the table. Sirius stares at a mark on the wall. 

“You’ll have to ask my maker about that one, sweetheart,” he eventually says, his words kind but his tone dry. “The Veil swallowed me up,” Sirius raises his glass to his lips, “but it spat me back out again.” He sets the glass back down, nearly empty now. Tonks knows she’s crossed some kind of line by bringing this up. 

“And you remember nothing about it?” she asks, trying to find a way to end this topic of conversation. She isn't expecting Sirius to shrug. She frowns. 

“Do you?”

Sirius picks up his glass, folding one arm across his abdomen. He’s wearing a black t-shirt, a denim jacket over the top. The movement brings the material taut over his shoulders. 

“Would you like the truth, or the party line?” he says, swirling the amber whisky in his glass. He sighs when Tonks gestures at him to continue. “Sometimes I think I do,” he admits. “Other times, I’m sure. I didn’t at first. Nothing at all. But I knew it was there, the memory,” he says, making unnerving eye contact with her. He leans forward, elbows resting on the table top too. His posture mirrors her own. “Little pieces come back, now. But they rarely make sense. It’s like putting a smashed mirror back together, you know? I can’t tell which bits go where, ‘cause they all look the bloody same but they have different edges. It’s confusing,” he mutters dryly, looking away. “Sometimes when I do remember a little piece of the Veil, it feels like I lose something here. Some grip on reality. Don’t have a great handle on that at the best of times, so.” Sirius runs his tongue over his teeth. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m still in there, imagining all of this. That’s what it felt like, when I was in Az ―” 

He doesn’t finish, frowning instead as he looks down at the dregs of his drink. Tonks feels the atmosphere shift in the room again, something bleak settling over them both. She wishes she’d never asked. She wishes Sirius had never answered. She watches him for a long moment as he stares at his hands, until she can’t take it anymore. 

She reaches out impulsively, then pinches the skin of Sirius’s left hand, _hard_ , holding the flesh between thumb and forefinger. 

“ _Ow_! What ―” 

“Just in case you were wondering if this was real,” she explains, and Sirius stares back incredulously, before huffing an equally surprised laugh. He rubs the spot with his other hand. 

“Cheers,” he says sarcastically, but there’s something like actual amusement underneath it, and Tonks finds herself oddly relieved. 

“Pass me the fags,” he says after a moment, gesturing towards the cigarettes sitting on a counter behind her. She pauses a moment, then leans back to get them, rocking on the back legs of the chair as she stretches. She tosses the packet onto the table, where they tumble towards Sirius. 

“Thanks,” he mumbles, pulling one out and summoning a match. 

They fall into silence again, as Sirius smokes, and Tonks remembers she’s not supposed to like this man. Not yet, anyway. 

She sighs. 

“How is he?” she asks after a moment, giving in to the one thing she promised herself she wouldn't bring up. 

“Don’t know,” Sirius says softly, exhaling a thin plume of grey smoke. “I haven't seen him.”

Tonks looks up. 

“What do you mean, you haven’t seen him?”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I find the sentence rather unambiguous myself ―” 

“Don’t be an arsehole,” she snaps, worry make her voice hard. “What do you mean you haven’t seen him?”

Sirius sniffs, runs a hand through his hair. He tucks it behind one ear, then shrugs. “I mean exactly what I said. I saw him, oh, few weeks ago I’d say. Told him to…” he stops, runs his tongue over his teeth. “I told him to choose,” he says, voice rough. 

“And?”

Sirius spreads his hands, smiling humorlessly. “And he didn’t come back. I heard you’d just had the baby, and when the moon passed and he still didn’t come.” Sirius lowers his voice, as if he’s saying something secret, intimate, which he doesn't quite want to share. “Well, I interpreted that as…” Sirius swallows thickly, expression clouding for a moment before his lips twist into what could be a smile, but there’s no humour behind it. “As him having chosen.”

Tonks feels her chest tighten, her mind reeling. The smoke from Sirius’s cigarette makes a sort of opaque veil between them, the smell filling the room and making it seem smaller. 

“So you had no idea I’d left him?”

Sirius shakes his head, stubbing his cigarette out. “Been avoiding mutual company,” he says quietly. 

Tonks crosses her arms, then brings one hand to her lips. She shakes her head, shutting her eyes as she lets this information settle in her brain. She counts the days in her head. Remus has seen Teddy twice a week since she left, but Tonks hasn’t been there for that, has asked Andromeda to arrange it all. She doesn't hate Remus, not at all, but she’s too angry with him, with herself, with everything, to be in the same room as him at the moment. And all this time, she’d just assumed that as soon as she was out the door, Remus would be walking through this one, light as a feather. But apparently not, she thinks, wondering how it’s possible to know someone so well and yet misjudge them entirely at the same time. 

Sirius looks as though he’s thinking something similar. 

“And so he’s been rattling around in that empty flat for weeks, both of us thinking he was with the other,” she states, and suddenly it makes perfect sense. She knew his guilt had been burning a hole inside him. Of course he’d leave them both alone; Tonks, righteously furious with everything, needing space from him, and the dissolution of their relationship. And Sirius? Well, Tonks doesn’t want to even begin thinking about how murky the emotional waters are there. 

She’d never expected Remus to chase her, but she hadn’t expected him to punish himself by not going to Sirius either. 

_Stupid, beautiful idiot of a man_. 

“Fucking Remus,” Sirius murmurs, rubbing his fingers over his eyes and exhaling loudly in what could be frustration, exasperation, anger. 

“Yeah,” she agrees, trying not to let the proprietary anger rise at Sirius being worried about Remus too. Of course he is, she reminds herself, metaphorically shaking the feeling off. It almost feels like it works. 

_It isn’t your responsibility to fix these two_ , she thinks suddenly, and somehow, it really hits home this time. 

She thinks it might be time to leave. 

“So,” she says, breaking the silence Sirius has built. He stares at her, almost warily. She raises one eyebrow, standing. 

“So?”

“So, go and see him,” she says bluntly. 

Sirius continues to stare at her cautiously. He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. 

“Shouldn’t you do that?”

Tonks laughs, and for the first time it weeks it seems like it has real feeling behind it, something beyond desperation or malice. She imagines the cobwebs clearing out inside her, dust clouds coming out her mouth as the sound croaks out of her. 

“No, Sirius.” She pulls her coat from over the back of the chair, slips her arms inside it. It's her favourite coat, and she can fit into it again, after months of carrying Teddy. She misses him, suddenly, wonders what kind of afternoon he’s had with her mother. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you should see him. He was yours long before he was mine.” 

It feels good to say it. It hurts, like the fragile skin over a healing wound does, but not as badly as she thought it would. It’s the first thing she learnt as an Auror; some wounds are deeper than they look, but others? For all they might bleed and ache, they heal faster than it might seem. 

“Go look after him. Make sure he’s in one piece,” she says, draining the last of her drink. She cracks her neck. 

“Moony doesn’t need looking after ―”

“Wrong,” Tonks scoffs, wryly. “He needs it more than you’ve ever understood.” 

She sniffs, pulling her gloves on. She feels the truth of that heavy inside her, the need to smooth things over between the two of them clawing it's way up her chest again, but she ignores it. She’s done looking after the feelings of ragged and broken men ― they have each other. She needs to look after herself, finally, after long years of putting her own emotions, her own needs aside. She wanted her own sympathetic character for her story, and she found one ― a tortured, lovely man, struggling to keep his head up as it seemed the wolf kept trying to hobble him, but she knows now that wasn’t really her story; that was all still part of his. She needs to be her own protagonist, now. The very notion of it feels terrifying and freeing all at once. 

“I’m not very good at looking after people,” Sirius admits as Tonks finishes wrapping her scarf around her neck. She looks him over appraisingly as he stands. 

“No, I can see that.” She smiles slightly at the surprised expression on his face. _What, forgot I had a sense of humour, Sirius?_ “The trick is, start with yourself. Which, I know, it’s harder than it sounds,” she adds self-deprecatingly, aware that she’s barely slept, and she’s wearing the same t-shirt that from yesterday. “Then, when you’ve got that under control, see if you can help out those around you who need it.” _You know, the ones who’ve been crying out for it for years but can never bring themselves to actually ask_ , she doesn’t say. That’s too much, too honest. It’s not her place to make judgements like that. She doesn’t want it to be. 

Sirius nods. He’s standing in front of her, but his expression is still that mix of caution and apprehension, as if he’s waiting for her to snap at him again. It’s valid, she thinks, and she knows she still might. It’s rather freeing, being volatile. 

“For what it’s worth, I don’t hate you,” she says abruptly, letting her hands drop to her sides. Sirius looks at her, disbelief etching itself slowly across his face, wiping away the apprehension. She's not sure if that’s better, but she’s not sure if she really cares right now. “I want to punch you in the face, yeah. But I’ve never hated you,” she adds lightly. 

This close, she can feel the difference in their height. He’s not as tall as Remus, she thinks, doesn't smell the same, and the sudden pang of longing skewers her. She looks away, wrapping her coat around her tighter as she heads towards the door. She doesn't want to hear whether Sirius hates her or not. She can’t help but feel that if she begins to imagine how much hurt he must carry inside him, it’ll smother her. 

“Tonks,” Sirius calls out abruptly, and she turns. “You can come back. Any time. Even if it’s only because you want to hit me,” he adds, a flash of gentle humour in his voice, and Tonks can’t help but smile a little at that. 

“Alright. We’ll see,” she says. She waits a minute, then swallows. “You should come and meet Teddy,” she says after a while, heart pounding. “Not yet, though,” she adds, as Sirius nods. “I...I’ll let you know. But not yet.”

He nods again. “I’d like that.”

“Good. Catch ya, Sirius,” she says, opening the door. 

She steps out onto the pavement, the light drizzle of the rain falling onto the heavy wool of her coat, but the clouds don’t seem as thick as before. Fucking cliche, she thinks, smiling wryly as the sun filters through the grey, lighting up small patches of the damp concrete. 

It’s a fucking cliche, but she’s smiling all the same.

***

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are love! Come find me on [LJ ](http://shiftylinguini.livejournal.com/profile/)or [tumblr ](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard)❤


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